


Lost

by graysonsflight



Category: Batman: The Animated Series, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: After Jason, F/M, Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 17:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graysonsflight/pseuds/graysonsflight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbara Gordon traces the lines of Dick Grayson's downward spiral, beginning with the night of Jason's death, and ending with him not saying good-bye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redlacebird](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=redlacebird).



            Dad wasn’t home yet.  I figured I probably wouldn’t be able to catch him before I went out.  Which was probably for the best – I knew he would ask too many questions.  He’d want to know more about Jared, and since this was only our second date, I didn’t feel like sharing too much.  Dad would try to use the computers at the station to look him up or something crazy like that.

            I had just finished putting my earrings on when I heard the frantic knocking at the door.  I reached into my backpack for one of my Baterangs.  Our townhouse wasn’t in the worst part of Gotham, but you never knew who was going to look of the address of Commissioner Gordon.   I made my way to the door, my skirt swishing against my knees.  With the Baterang just behind my back, I slowly eased open the door.

            “Can I help ya…you…?”  All of the air in my lungs vanished at the sight before me.

            Dick Grayson stood, his hair everywhere, clothes rumpled, and eyes bright red, trembling on my doorstep.  I didn’t think; I just threw the door open wider.

            He stumbled into the living room.  That was the only word I could think of to describe his movement.  Richard John Grayson: King of Grace and Defier of Gravity, stumbled.  That’s how I knew it was bad. He kept moving, dazed, lost, bumping into every piece of furniture he could find.  I could hear the breath shuddering in and out of his lungs.

            “Dick, what happened?” I asked moving towards him as fast as I could, wincing as I saw him slam his hip into my countertop.  I pulled him towards me; back out of the kitchen, and just in front of the couch.  There wasn’t enough time to make him sit down.

            “He’s gone. Jay… he’s…” That’s all he could say.  Four words choked with more emotion than I had ever seen out of the Boy Wonder.  I opened up my arms and he fell into them, his face pressed into my shoulder. His whole body shook as he silently sobbed.  His tears soaked through my shirt.

            I already knew that there was nothing I could say, nothing that I could do to make this moment okay.  I could feel his pain burrowing into my heart, making it heavy as I shared in his grief.

            We stood there for what felt like forever; him trembling the whole time, me with my own tears making it impossible to see.  We held each other, suffering, scared and devastated, until finally I could hear his hoarse whisper breaking through the deathly quiet.

            “I can’t…” he murmured.  “I can’t…”

            “Can’t?” I asked, trying to pull him back so I could see his face, but he refused to loosen his hold on me. “Dick, you can’t what?”

            “…Can’t lose you too…”

I pulled him down onto the couch with me, wrapping my arms around him.  The clock on the bookcase let me know I was supposed to have met up with Jared fifteen minutes ago.  My phone was in my bedroom, and had probably already rang once or twice.  I’d get back to it later.

            Dick was still shaking as he tried to tell me what had happened.

            “It was the Joker,” he whispered.  “Barbara, I was suppose to have been on that mission…it was… it should have been me…but Bruce and I were fighting again…and Jay… Jay wasn’t…Alfred called me…Bruce is bringing him home tomorrow… and…Barbara, he’s gone… I’m going to have to tell…I don’t know how to tell the team…”

            I could feel him wheezing before I could hear it.  It had been a long, long time since Dick had had an asthma attack, but right now, I wasn’t sure he had the ability to be able to stop it.

            “Shhh…” I tried, starting to rub small circles into his back as I forced him to sit up.  I had to shut it off; I had to turn off the way it hurt knowing I had just lost one of my friends.  I had to box up the pain that came with knowing a sixteen-year-old boy had just been murdered.  I had to shut it all down, because right now I had to be strong enough for my best friend to keep himself breathing.  “Dick, I need you to focus.”

            He listened to me, swallowing hard, working to control the flow of oxygen to his lungs.  Once I knew he was in control, I let him lay his head back down on my shoulder, and we stared at the wall together.

            “I can’t lose you too…” he whispered again.  I held him tighter to me.

            “I’m not going anywhere, Boy Wonder,” I promised, secretly reminding myself I couldn’t stand to lose him either.

            “Barbara!” My father shouted as he came through the unlocked front door.  “Barbara, have you seen…” he trained off as he found us.  My father ran a hand through his hair.  “I thought it might have been your bike out front.”

            Dick pulled himself slowly from me, swallowing hard as he met my father’s eyes.

            “I’m sorry, Sir,” he started.  “I know you don’t like it when I’m hear and Barbara’s alone.”

            My father rolled his eyes as he pulled Dick into one of his fiercest hugs.  “Alfred has been looking for you, son.  He called the station because he’s tried calling you what he claims is over forty times. He was worried you may have crashed that death-cycle of yours.”

            “I’ve been…”

            “Here.” Dad interrupted.  “I had a hunch. Are you hungry?”

I stood from the couch, giving my dad a smile as he dragged Dick towards the kitchen.  Dad may not have been a great cook, but to him, food meant love.  He could solve hungry; he couldn’t solve grief.

            “I’ll be right back, just going to change.”  I wasn’t expecting both of them to turn and look at me.

            “Oh god, Babs,” Dick cringed.  “Your date…I forgot… I’m…”

            “Date?” My father cut in, looking between the two of us.

            “Don’t worry about it,” I assured him.  “This is where I need to be.”

 

\---

 

Dinah looks at me from across the room, her fingers clasped under her chin.

            “You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to, Barbara,” she reminds me.

            “I do though,” I insist, twisting and twisting my necklace around my fingers.  The charm is a little silver bird.  I like to imagine that if it were bigger, its eyes would be blue.

            “Looking back, I knew.” I tell her.  “That night when he stood at my front door, shaking, scared, that he was going to fall apart.  Dick hid it well, and he had everyone else convinced that he was going to be okay.”

            “I did try to talk to him,” Dinah assures me.  But I know that even if he did tell her anything, which he didn’t, she would never tell me what he said.

             “Sure,” I continue, “but Jason’s death was just the beginning of a horrible, dangerous, downward spiral.  After that, Tula died, and then Kaldur left the team.  I don’t care that I know now Kaldur’s decent into darkness was a ruse.  I’d bet money that him leaving was real, and it was Dick who talked him back in – probably with promises of justice, maybe a little bit of revenge.”  Dinah laughs a little, bitterly, at this, but she lets me continue.  “When Wally and Artemis left – I thought that would be it.  I honestly thought that he wouldn’t be able to keep it together without Wally around.”

            “But he did,” Dinah reminds me, and now it is my turn to laugh bitterly.

            “Sure he did.  It was just one thing after another.  And with each new thing, Bruce and the other Big Leaguers heading off world, Roy’s fall from grace, Arsenal – Arsenal who was so much like Jay, it physically hurt me to be in the same room as him – and Artemis’s ‘death.’  Say what you will, he may have added to his own stress, with the lying and the secrets, but I think it was the only way he could survive.  Wally ceasing?  That was it.  That was the final thing that broke him.”

            Dinah regards me thoughtfully.  “And what about you?”  It is then that I realize I’m trembling.

            “He left.” I whisper.  “I thought he and I had actually gotten somewhere.  I thought maybe, just maybe, me – a relationship with me would be enough to get him to stay.  But maybe that’s why he had to leave without saying good-bye.  I mean, Wally did the same thing to Artemis didn’t he?” 

            “I don’t follow,” Dinah tells me.

            “Look,” I say, starting to talk with my hands.  “When Wally left, I think a part of him knew that he wasn’t going to be coming back.  And even though he had just gotten Artemis back, safe and in one piece, he knew that he had to go. So he didn’t tell her – he never said good-bye.  I think he figured that if he did, if he tried, he’d never be able to leave.”

            “And you think Dick did the same thing?”

            “I do.  He told Kaldur he was leaving, but he never told me.  Not me, or Bruce, or Tim, or even Alfred.  He just packed a bag and left.”

            “Would you have tried to stop him?” she asks.  I can see the sadness in her eyes, whether its sadness for me, or sadness for Dick, I can’t tell.

            “Maybe,” I whisper, trying hard not to cry as I meet her eyes. Trying hard not to hear myself saying that maybe, I had _lost_ him. I had lost the boy who came to me and told me he couldn’t lose me…

            _Maybe._ I think to myself, tracing back all of the lines, all of the clues to how Dick finally lost himself and wondering mutely how I could trace back his breaking point, but I still couldn’t place a finger on my own.

**Author's Note:**

> So this feel fest started with two things: It always bothered me that Barbara was in the room when Dick left - but he didn't say a word to her, and two a beautiful piece of artwork by redlacebird over on deviantart called "Can't Lose You Too"
> 
> Honestly, you should really go check the picture out.


End file.
